


Sharp Dressed Man

by OneHandedBooks



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hannibal Loves Will, Hannibal annoys the bejeezus out of Mr. Nancy, Hannibal declines to get his shit entirely together, Hannibal is Hannibal, Mr. Nancy sews Hannibal's ridiculous Italy arc wardrobe, Mr. Nancy tells a super mean story at Hannibal, and then tells him to get his shit together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 22:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHandedBooks/pseuds/OneHandedBooks
Summary: A response to the very important prompt- what if Mr. Nancy were Hannibal's tailor?A very VERY late entry for FullerFeast





	Sharp Dressed Man

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be for #FullerFeast, but real life intervened, as it so often does. Thank god for Hannibal Cre-ATE-ive's November Amnesty. Also, I felt like I really should finish this given the sad news about American Gods.

_"You better get yourself a queen."- Mr. Nancy, American Gods 108_

 

Hannibal stood in the unremarkable doorway of an unremarkable townhouse in the 2e arrondissement. He tucked his small wicker basket under one arm and knocked twice on the unremarkable wooden door.

He didn’t get an answer, but he hadn’t precisely expected one either. He held the basket a little tighter against his hip and shouldered his way inside. The door swung open into the small octagonal foyer striking a jangling silver bell overhead. The high pretty chime sounded sharply off the Moroccan tile walls.

The foyer fed into a little hallway hung with faded prints of West African life. A line of blind tortoiseshell masks marked with stark white paint stared down from one wall.  At the far end, a disquieting watercolor portrait of a small, dark-skinned boy, one foot bound in rags and beset with flies.

The hall gave way to a long narrow workroom, a little too long to fit logically within the confines of the modest townhouse. At the furthest end was a sewing table holding an old, but well-maintained Singer. The front section of the room was arranged something like a parlor, with a scratched maple farm table and a selection of dramatically mismatched chairs. Hannibal set the wicker basket on the table, folded his hands patiently, and waited.

Mr. Nancy entered at the far end of the workroom a wizened old man, stooped and wrinkled, his outrageous purple checked suit hanging loose on his shrunken frame. There was the faintest hint of the unnatural about him- a sense of too many eyes and too many limbs. As he crossed the long, long room, he changed- shimmering and shifting and standing taller with every step until he reached Hannibal as a fine man of forty.

“Showy,” Hannibal commented drily.

Nancy smiled wide, showing a great many strong white teeth. He stripped off his canary yellow leather gloves and stuck them in his suit pocket. Took Hannibal by the elbow and squeezed, then kissed each cheek with rough good humor.

“It has been a long time, old friend.”

He held Hannibal at arms-length and looked him over critically, taking in the black leather pants and the motorcycle boots. The sleek, black-zippered jacket over the tight black henley. Scrape of grey stubble. Hair gone shaggy, long enough to brush the nape of his neck.

“On the run again?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Nancy nodded then glanced at the small woven basket on the table, stomach growling.

“Lunch?”

“Tea.”

“Even better.”

Hannibal opened the split-top picnic basket, pulled out two bone china plates decorated with blue flowers, and set them on the table. Two full sets of silverware and a stack of napkins followed. Then a whole tray of crustless sandwiches and four tiny mincemeat pies. A red-speckled ceramic bowl of sweet, ripe fruit. A pale green dish of bright green vegetables. A large porcelain tea pot filled with steaming black tea, two saucers and two delicate teacups rimmed with gold.

“Showoff,” Nancy commented as Hannibal lifted an entire tri-level cake stand laden with petit fours and little iced cookies from the basket’s impossible depths.

“You can’t sew suits on an empty stomach,” Hannibal responded archly. “As you always say.”

Nancy pulled a battered, overstuffed, pink armchair over to the table and collapsed into it with a long, hungry sigh. “Do I always say that?”

“Indeed you do.”

Hannibal put two sprigs of crimson honeysuckle on the edge of each plate then paused and stood back a moment to survey the table.

Nancy waited for precisely two seconds, eyebrows raised, then waved his hand impatiently at Hannibal.

“Sit, sit, sit. Pour the tea before it gets cold, why don’t you? Lord, we’ll be a hundred years older before you’re finished fussing there.”

“Fussing,” Hannibal sniffed, “says the man wearing spats and carved bone cufflinks and a fedora with a feather in the year twenty-seventeen.”

“You’re challenging my style? I’m  _your_  tailor, Hannibal.”

Hannibal made a non-committal “hmm” noise, but he poured the tea for them anyway, a piping hot Oolong this time.

When the teacups were full, he took a seat in an ornately carved mahogany chair. It had a cobalt velvet cushion and looked considerably like throne. A Bishop’s chair it was, from Cathedral Ste. Marie Saint in St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Nancy had admired it greatly when he’d last visited and Wednesday had kindly picked it up for him shortly thereafter, following a tragic fire in the rectory. A suspiciously tragic fire, if Nancy recalled correctly.

Hannibal draped a linen napkin over his knee and gestured graciously at the little table, weighed down now with all manner of delightful delicacies. “Please, eat.”

Nancy didn’t need to be asked twice. He loaded his china plate with grapes and strawberries and slices of juicy coral melon. With little cakes and cookies. Stacks of perfectly square sandwiches stuffed with chicken and watercress. White wine and butter-poached collard greens.

He reached for one of the tiny tempting meat pies- there was just about enough space for one at the edge of his plate- and then hesitated, long-fingered hand outstretched. He looked back and forth between Hannibal and the little pies. Their buttery tops were cracked, venting savory steam, and they were stuffed near to bursting with tender fruit and spicy suet and some kind of finely minced meat.

“Traditional recipe?” Nancy asked warily.

“After a fashion.” Hannibal’s mouth twitched up minutely at the corners. “My guests have said they’re to die for.”

Nancy made a sort of _hmmpf-_ ing noise, as though he’d expected nothing less, and drew his hand back, empty.  He tucked his napkin into his shirt and tucked in.

*            *           *

When his plate was utterly empty except for the honeysuckle blossoms, Nancy stretched and sighed with deep pleasure, patting his lean flat stomach.

“Your belly holds as much as my basket and suffers as little,” Hannibal commented, sipping his tea.

“It’s a gift,” Nancy said with a rapacious smile.  He stuffed one of the red honeysuckle flowers into his mouth and licked his lips.

"That was a garnish."

"But tasty nonetheless," Nancy grinned, tipping the last flower up so the clear stickysweet nectar inside would drip into his mouth. He sighed again and set the spent flower aside.

"This reminds me of a story," he began expansively.

"Everything reminds you of a story."

“One day Hades…” Nancy started. He paused to point in Hannibal’s direction. “That’s you.”

Hannibal stared at him with excessive courtesy over the thin gold rim of his teacup. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Yes.” Nancy agreed with a little nod. “Now where was I?”

“I believe you had made it all the way to _one day Hades_.”

Nancy stretched again, arms reaching overhead then back down in a temporary blur of extra limbs.  “That’s right now. That’s just right. One day Hades was walking the banks of the Arkadian River. Just taking himself a little constitutional in the Upworld. Gets stuffy, you know, ruling the dead.”

Hannibal wrapped his hands around his steaming teacup and regarded Nancy calmly. A tiny muscle began to jump ever so slightly under his right eye.

Nancy gave him a pointed look and kept talking. As he yarned, his accent circumnavigated the globe, bouncing from clipped Ghana to languid Suriname to a Louisiana patois so thick even Hannibal could barely understand him.

“Down the river, Hades met a slim, springtime creature name of Persephone. I swear people would name their children _anything_ in those days. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Ring a bell?”

Hannibal shifted slightly in the regal embrace of his grand chair, face politely blank as shadows began to hiss and twine around his shoulders.

“Persephone was just frolicking all alone in a sweetgrass meadow by the riverbank. Her three little dogs runnin and yappin at her feet…or was it just the one dog with three heads? You know I can’t recall…” Nancy feigned a dismissive little shrug. “Such a long long time ago now.”

“Well now Hades was quite taken with that gorgeous thing, who wouldn’t be, and he offered her a place in his court. Said no, of course. Wise girl.”

Hannibal’s fingernails made a high _tick tick tick_ sound as he started tapping them against the side of the thin porcelain cup.

“Hades certainly couldn’t accept that. He coaxed and cozened. Even offered her a little serenade on a curséd harp. Terrible instrument! Sounds like a…like a dust devil blowing ‘cross the top of a dozen mismatched pop bottles.”

“With honeyed words he lured that trembling flower to the mouth of the Arkadian where the river runs backwards into Hell and then further down into the lower dark. There he offered her all manner of courting gifts- an ivory girl impaled on a golden hart, a blind sinner grafted into a blooming tree, bleeding heart on a stand of swords. All things perfect…ifn’ you were dead maybe. Bit more poison than perfect for natural-type beings I imagine.”

Hannibal sucked at one canine and blew on his tea, nearly boiling over now with the heat of his hands.

“Hades had a grand wedding feast set out, table filled with the most luscious food Persephone had ever seen- fresh red fruit and savory meat and all manner o’ sweets. Course she was starving by then, poor thing. Down in Hell for months while endless Winter raged above. She told Hades she’d dine with him even if it meant she could never leave and let him escort her to the foot of the table and fill her plate.”

 “And Hades, well… I think Hades really did believe that pure little thing when she said she would stay with him. But it was not to be. After Hades took his seat at the far end of the long long table, furthest from the river delta, Persephone flipped her chair back, called her little three-headed dog to her, and took off runnin. Ran right outta Hell she did and never _ever_ looked back.”

Hannibal slammed his tea cup down hard enough to crack the table beneath it, eyes blazing and lips pressed tight. “That is _quite enough_.”

Mr. Nancy sat up straight and serious and pointed an accusatory finger at Hannibal, his teasing ease thrown off like an unused cloak. “ _What_ did I tell you last time I saw you?”

 Hannibal ran a sharp black-nailed finger back and forth across the crack in the table. “Get yourself a queen,” he grumbled finally.

“And _did_ you?”

Hannibal thought of golden hair and slender curves. Strong and delicate hands holding a gun and a glass of whiskey. Dark curls and broad shoulders. Blood and fear and trembling in the dark.

“-Ish.”

Nancy gave Hannibal an excessively skeptical look and Hannibal shrugged.

“You know this actually reminds _me_ of a story.”

Nancy’s skepticism deepened, a deep furrow creasing his dark brow. “Does it now?”

“Oh yes,” Hannibal replied. “Quite a short tale actually. Once upon time there was a spider. A relatively obscure little seven-legged creature who snuck into Brother Death’s house and ate all of his food and was otherwise exceedingly rude.” He paused, hands folded beneath his chin, and waited.

“And then what?” Nancy prompted finally, unable to stop himself.

Hannibal grinned around a mouth full of too sharp teeth. “And then Brother Death devoured him. Bones and all.”  
  
Nancy’s glittery eyes flashed hot and angry. "That is _not_ how that story ends.”

Hannibal wiped his hands resolutely on his napkin and stood to pack up the detritus of their meal. “Storyteller controls the story, _Anansi_. As you so often say.”

Nancy pushed back from the table and strolled to the racks of fine spider silk fabric lining one long wall of his workroom, deliberately giving Hannibal his back. Hannibal studiously ignored him, stowing the little plates and silver and serving dishes in the bottom of the small basket.

 “Well, out with it,” Nancy called over his shoulder. “What do you need this time?”

Hannibal carefully pressed the three-layer cake stand, empty now of all but crumbs, down into the tiny basket until it disappeared, then closed the sides over it all and set it under the table. “I need new suits. At least three. Shirts. A tuxedo.”

“Oh, is that all?”

 “Fair enough trade for tea and a story.”

“You didn’t tell _any kind_ of a story.”

“I’m certain I did. And I listened to your story. Such as it was.”

Nancy made his small _hmpf_ -ing sound again and turned back to the bolts of cloth. “Fabric preferences?”

“What do you recommend?”

“Depends. Camouflage or peacock?”

Hannibal smiled, thinking of FBI and Interpol pursuit. Of Mason Verger’s entirely obvious kidnapping crusade. _And Will? Maybe? Maybe Will as well?_

“Peacock.”

Nancy grinned, persistent good-humor flooding back. “Now you’re talking my language. Your Baltimore suits were one thing. These will be…something else. Yes indeed.”

Nancy pulled bolt after bolt of audacious fabric down and laid them across the broad cutting table for Hannibal’s appraisal. Hannibal flipped through them with interest, handing Nancy the ones he wanted- an obsidian velvet with a white chalk stripe, a woody brown windowpane in lightweight silk cashmere, a dense delicate wool with diagonal stripes of white and black and charcoal.

In the middle of the pile was a bolt of cobalt silk charmeuse. Hannibal rubbed a bit of the smooth fabric between his fingers, thinking ties and pocket-squares. Thinking nightclothes and scarves and sleek smooth bindings. He imagined the way it would set off Will’s eyes. Imagined draping a great swath of it around Will’s strong bare body. The slithering slide of it over scarred skin as he pulled it away again.

For a moment, Hannibal's eyes brightened from maroon to flame and the shadow of branching antlers appeared on the wall behind his head.

Nancy looked at him over the stack of fabric, one eyebrow raised dramatically. "Your _person suit_ is slipping."

"And whose fault is that?" Hannibal said peevishly. He started sorting through Nancy’s fabric choices again, annoyed to have been pulled from his pleasant fantasy. To have been _caught_ fantasizing.

"You say that like I made it," Nancy retorted.

Hannibal looked down his nose at a bolt of bright purple plaid wool that Nancy particularly favored. Fingered a length of crimson paisley silk with a bit more approval.  "It _was_ your design."

"And you made extensive modifications. If you recall. I can't be held responsible."

Hannibal paused then turned away from the table to consider the racks of fabric behind him again. He ran his tongue along his lower lip, pulled a bolt of cool white broadcloth down and spread it out on the table.

“Can you make clothes to different measurements than mine, without the person present? Shirt? Suit maybe?”

Nancy sniffed, offended. “Of course. Provided you can describe the person who’ll be wearing them. In detail.”

Hannibal’s eyes strayed from the broadcloth, skating again and again over the blue silk charmeuse.  “Oh yes. I certainly can.”


End file.
